World So Cold
by sapphireswimming
Summary: Co-written with DannyPhantomSG-1. Klemper wants some friends. Danny can't let that happen. Happy Angst Day!


This is DannyPhantomSG1, but no one knows me anymore, so I won't say too much. I'm hanging out with sapphireswimming, and she randomly remembered it was angst day, so we cranked this puppy out. Disclaimer that I haven't written fic for like five years, and she hasn't been writing for DP for a bit, so we're both very out of practice.

Hope you can enjoy it anyway.

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**World So Cold**

October 1, 2019

Happy Angst Day!

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If there were one ghost Danny never anticipated frantically flying after to foil, it was Klemper. He'd always been clingy, sure, and hadn't taken clues very well, but he'd always been friendly enough. Too friendly in retrospect.

Danny had never put much thought into Klemper's ultimate intentions because he'd never done anything explicitly bad - definitely nothing like this. But the signs had ben there from the very beginning. Klemper was friendly because he _wanted _friends, and if no one wanted to be his friend the easy way…

He'd have to create his own friends.

His own ghost friends.

And that meant making ghosts the only way he – or Danny – knew how.

That was how they'd ended up here.

The cold had little effect on Danny anymore. He barely felt the frigidity in the air. But the way it looked like his ghost sense was on overdrive told him a different story. He knew there was only one ghost here – one ghost and several humans. And humans weren't immune to the cold like he was.

The floor beneath his feet was slick as he coasted to a stop at the entrance of the building. Tendrils of frost were creeping up along the walls, and even in his ghost state, Danny could tell the conditions were not suitable to support life. How long had they been here? How many minutes in this place as it froze over, slowly sapping the body heat away from their all-too-fragile human bodies? Danny took a deep breath, trying to steady his heartbeat as he took his first tentative step into the building. There was a sinking feeling in his gut, the air around him icy silent but for his cautious steps on the frozen floor.

The ice cracked beneath his feet, spider-webbing at the edges of the walls on either side. He froze for a moment, wondering if it had alerted anyone to his presence. The rock that had settled in his stomach began to churn as he realized the sound probably_ should _have alerted someone…anyone. He glanced at the nearest doorway expecting to see them rush out in anger, prepping his invisibility to activate at any moment. But no one came.

Bad. This was bad. This was bad, right? Normally, it was pretty nice not to be ambushed by ghosts, but this just felt wrong, eerily silent. He needed to find Klemper, to stop him from doing this to more buildings in his messed-up quest to make himself an army of friends. But first he had to face what his instincts were telling him was most wrong about this place.

The utter, deafening silence.

His feet lifted from the cracked ice, and he floated forward far enough to peek his head through the door, prepared, he hoped, for anything.

He could never have been prepared, though. No amount of bracing could shield him from this impact.

The force of the blast caught him square in the chest, knocking the air out of his lungs even before his back met the hard, unfinished concrete of the wall behind him. But as Klemper's attack forced ice to seep through his suit, he felt a different coldness enter his heart as he registered what else he'd seen in the room with them.

No – his throat closed up as he tried to swallow. Or shout. Shakily, a hand pressed off the wall behind him. Bits of concrete flaked off of his suit and for a moment he thought his legs would give way.

"Oh God," he breathed, eyes locking with Klemper's. the other ghost had little emotion on his face beyond the usual earnestness. But Danny felt something sick in his soul as he hesitantly glanced over Klemper's shoulder to the figures behind him slumped unnaturally over their desks.

They weren't moving. None of them were moving. Not so much as a twitch from fingers that he could now see were blue and frigid where they fell across the paneled wood of each desktop.

"Oh God," he said again, and his breath hung in the air in a cloud, obscuring his vision for a moment. "Klemper, what did you…? Move over. I have to get them out of here!"

His voice came out ten times quieter than he'd intended, but he was afraid to speak any louder, afraid it would shatter the delicate precipice he was standing on.

Klemper looked at him and smiled. "They're gonna be my friends!" he said, sweeping a pink-striped arm to the side.

Unbidden tears traitorously blurred Danny's vision.

"Klemper, you can't…Please tell me they're not…" Danny pleaded, but he knew better, his breaths quickening in the panic between his words.

"I asked them to be my friends," Klemper said, "and now they are!"

The tears began crystalizing on Danny's eyelashes, solidifying as he tried to blink them away. They felt cold against his cheeks.

"Please, please, please," he muttered, stumbling forward toward the people – the human beings – behind the other ghost. Klemper, however took a defensive stance as Danny approached, and his eyes reddened in a way Danny had never seen before.

"Stay away from my new friends," Klemper demanded through clenched teeth, ice forming in his hands.

"Look—" Danny began, hands up as his eyes stayed locked on the people, desperately looking for some sign of life. "Look—" he said again, not even sure what he was trying to say, just trying to buy some time to figure out how he could fix this.

He saw Klemper make a move out of the corner of his eye and didn't even hesitate – didn't think – as he shot a powerful blast of his own at the ghost. He heard Klemper react, heard him hit the ground, but Danny didn't bother to look as he rushed over to the first person he could reach and placed a shaking hand on the (_too cold, so cold, frozen, oh my god_) skin on their neck.

Dead. They were dead. They were _dead, _and—

And he was scrambling to reach the next person, pushing past a desk and falling hard against its corner to reach their wrist, hoping beyond hope for a different answer.

But he should know by now better than to hope. He'd been doing this for years, seen terrifying and gruesome results of ghost fights and come painfully close to losing his own life. But he'd never, up to this moment, been responsible for someone else losing theirs.

Now he was in a room with dozens of people he'd failed, all because he'd underestimated the darkest intentions of his most innocent foe.

The blood pumped in his ears until it was a pulsing roar that blocked out nearly everything else. He was staring at the man frozen in front of him, unable to tear his eyes away. This man, this random stranger who was someone's son, someone's friend, someone's brother…who meant something to someone…He was dead.

They were all dead.

He heard a rustling of stiff pajamas and turned slowly to watch as Klemper rose from his spot on the ground.

"I don't know where they are now," the other ghost said, voice distant and soft. "But I'm gonna try to find them, and then I will have friends."

Danny's hand curled into a fist over the surface of the desk. He struggled to his feet, mind whirling away from him.

"Klemper—" he managed, voice faint.

The ghost looked up at him innocently, maybe expecting a theory as to where these people – where their souls or their ghosts – had ended up. But Danny couldn't say anything, could barely breathe, barely move. So he blinked away tears and did the only thing he could think of. He whipped out the thermos, pressing the suction button in one quick move, and pulled Klemper in with no intention of reopening the container ever again.

Klemper looked surprised as he disappeared in a flash of blue.

Numbly, Danny screwed the cap back on and let his hand drop to his side. He stared blankly at the scene in front of him, unable to move, unable to think. He'd thought that once Klemper vanished, things would change, maybe the ice would thaw, or somehow this would all—

But it didn't. It wouldn't. The cold truth buried itself deep in his heart as the sirens approached. He ached with the pain of it, the suffocating guilt that any one of these people could be someone he knew, someone his friends knew. That even if he didn't know them, they were still humans who'd been killed by a ghost, and it was his job to protect this town from ghosts. It was his responsibility.

The air around him seemed to thicken as his breaths puffed heavily out of his lungs. It was so cold that it burned. He had failed.

He had _failed._

He didn't even realize he was crying again until he felt the tears freezing and cracking against his cheeks.

The sirens were close now, right outside. He couldn't stay here. He knew that. As a ghost with ice powers, this could just as easily be attributed to him. He had no doubt the news would jump on the theory at the first whiff of it. But it didn't matter. Let them say he did it. Let them think it was his fault.

Because as he flew away, he knew it may as well be true.


End file.
